The rendering of a variable value into audio, such as a date, credit card number, account balance, etc., by a media server is generally considerably more complicated than simply fetching and playing a pre-recorded audio file. The value of the variable is first converted into a list of pre-recorded files that contain fragments of the audio for the variable, and then the audio in the files is concatenated together to form a rendered audio stream corresponding to the variable.
It is necessary to perform various calculations in order to render variables in a desired manner, such as using a specified language, a specified voice, and other specified attributes or characteristics. These calculations can be complex and can vary widely among different applications. It is desirable that a single media server be used simultaneously for multiple applications, multiple vendors, multiple languages and locales, for example. Thus, a flexible method of rendering audio variables is desired.
Existing rendering methods allow a third party (customer, user, service provider, etc.) to modify a scripting language that embodies algorithms and calculations to render a variable, and to provide a set of pre-recorded audio prompts to be returned by those calculations. The use of such techniques in a media server environment, however, requires that the media server itself execute complex scripts. In addition, the applications using the media server have to understand how to load the scripts and prompts onto the media server, and how to invoke the scripts at rendering time. Such an arrangement requires an unduly complex interface between the media server and applications.
It would therefore be desirable to have a system and method for constructing phrases for a media server that overcomes the above-described drawbacks of existing systems.